A 38-year-old Long Island man named Patrick O’Meara has been charged with a hate crime after assaulting two transgender women who were trying to enter a McDonald’s in Queens, New York on Friday.
According to DNAinfo’s report, O’Meara pushed one of the women to the ground where he punched and kicked her while he screamed sexist and homophobic slurs at both of them. O’Meara left the women there briefly only to return with a cane, which he used to hit one of the victims in the head.
Cops told DNAinfo that one woman was treated at the scene, while the other woman, according to the criminal complaint, was taken to a local hospital. When cops arrived at the scene O’Meara tried acting as if he was in fact the one who’d been attacked, saying, “Those bitches assaulted me, I’m pressing charges, fuck you, you fucking faggot,” according to the criminal complaint. A witness to the crime has refuted O’Meara’s claime, telling DNAinfo, “He was harassing everybody that was walking by but when the trans women walked by he cleary was infuriated.”
Cops found a glass crack pipe in O’Meara’s pocket when they arrested him. O’Meara was charged in January for stealing and then driving a Volvo while drunk.
LGBTQ justice organizer at Make the Road New York, Bianey García, issued a statement condemning the attack:
We condemn this brutal hate attack and stand in solidarity with the survivors. We are horrified that transgender individuals in our community have suffered yet another hate attack. Transgender immigrant women like me are part of the heart and soul of our Jackson Heights, and we will not stand idly by as our community faces discrimination and violence. We will continue to organize in our communities and send the message that Jackson Heights and New York City must welcome and embrace all of us, and that hate has no place in our neighborhood and our City.
According to the New York City Anti-Violence Project, seven transgender women were murdered this past January and February in the US. Addressing the recent spike in violence against transgender women, The Southern Poverty Law Center recently wrote, “given the Trump administration’s most recent rescinding of President Barack Obama’s guidance on protections for transgender school children, along with the withdrawal from a court challenge related to this guidance by Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice, there is concern that these murders will go overlooked by the Trump administration.”